Many portable, battery-powered electronic devices such as radios, pagers, cassette recorders and the like have a covered battery compartment that is sized to accommodate several batteries and to interconnect them in a parallel or a serial configuration. The sides of the compartment have spiral spring terminals designed to forcedly contact the negative, bottom poles of the batteries, and stationary plates to contact their positive top located poles. Batteries, whether rechargeable or not, must be inserted one by one between pairs of such terminals. Other electronic instruments with a higher power draw such as video recorders accept a power pack housing a plurality of rechargeable power cells. A recharged power pack may be conveniently substituted for a run-down one in a few seconds.
It would be advantageous to replace the set of batteries of the first-described type of instrument by a rechargeable power pack which would fit in the battery compartment. However, the presence of the various spiral spring terminals and the battery-separating ribs that usually line the bottom of the battery compartment interfere with the insertion of such power packs.
It would be even more advantageous to replace either the non-rechargeable batteries or the rechargeable power pack of an electronic device with a kit comprising rechargeable cells and a circuit allowing recharging during or after operation of the device.
One of the problems encountered in making substitution of non-rechargeable power cells with a like number of rechargeable ones is the lesser rating voltage of the latter which may result in unacceptable power supply voltage levels.
Flexible contact members used in power supply packages can be damaged during insertion into an electronic device if they are caught by the surrounding structure. There is a need for more reliable contact assemblies.